Friday September 2, 2017

An eNote from Rodney

Dear Trinity Congregation,

Save the Dates: Sunday October 9. We will hold our Fall Festival. It will start at 3:00 pm the afternoon. The strings will play and we’ll hold our third annual chili cookoff. There will be games for the kids.

Sunday October 16th. Trinity will host Bishop Paul Leeland. On September 1, Bishop Leeland became the new Bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. As a way of introducing himself to Western North Carolina he is going to hold three services in different parts of the state. To meet all the Methodist in the mountains, Bishop Leeland wants to come to Asheville and his service will be held here at Trinity. What a great way for Bishop Leeland to see our building, our congregation and West Asheville. The service will begin at 3:00 pm and it will be followed by a reception in the fellowship hall.

Sunday will be the first Sunday in the month and so we will celebrate Communion and have a Baptism for the Pruett family. Also on the first Sunday of each month, some of our members go to Pritchard Park and offer a breakfast to the folks on the street. We thank them for that ministry and for the gift of their time. Also, Maxine Schrader took a lot of school supplies to Hall Fletcher Elementary this week and added to the gifts the Mary Mann class had already taken over. I remember when we started this ministry. At that time the word from public schools was that churches would offer help but didn’t trust churches to sustain it. Thank you all for your generosity in this ongoing ministry that I think is now eight years old.

Time will be one of the themes in the sermon for Sunday. John Howard Yoder makes the point that God is not timeless but enters time through Jesus in order to give our time significance. A theological understanding of time is a new subject for me and I am enjoying it. The lesson for the sermon on Sunday is Jeremiah 18:1­-10.

I hope you are able to enjoy this Labor Day gift of time to rest. The church office will be closed on Monday but we will be open on Sunday morning and I look forward to worshiping with you then.

Sincerely,

Rodney